


Of Six and Nightmares

by BrokeTheLights



Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: Animal Death, Blood, Cannibalism, Darkness, Death, Dummies, Fog, Manniquins, Memories, Ocean, Six Gets Mentally Traumatized (tm), Six thinks about her time in the Nest, Terror, The Maw, The Moon - Freeform, The Nest, The Shack, There's a good solid amount of thinking, Thinking, Traps, Waiting, and the Maw, bear traps, guys watch the 15 minute gameplay trailer, it will make this make a lot more sense lmao, rabbit - Freeform, rabbit caught in a bear trap, seriously guys there's even a paragraph of Six thinking about if the giants are cannibals, she appears! eventually, stuffed children, stuffed people, take that tag seriously, that's just the games though, the Hunter doesn't clean up ever, the woods - Freeform, there's a television in there somewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27928801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrokeTheLights/pseuds/BrokeTheLights
Summary: Six has escaped the Maw, and now she's stranded on top of it. She can't just go back in, only bad things could possible happen if she went back in. She must wait, and hope for something to change, she must figure out a way to land, and, if she's to survive in a world that is not the Maw once more, she must keep her wits about her so as to not lose herself. One never knows what's out there, what kind of magicks could steal someone's very thoughts away...
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	Of Six and Nightmares

A cold wind blew over the vast ocean as it stretched farther than the eye could see. The wind disturbed hardly a thing as it passed through the bright skies of day, the angry waves of the ocean already possessed by the moon to crash into each other. It did, however, disturb something, far from land in the middle of the ocean. The wind thrummed and sang a tune with a solitary smokestack that stuck out of the waters, smokeless, unnoticed by any living thing besides the tiny yellow-clad girl that sat just below it. The ship the smokestack was connected to tipped this way and that as the stack rocked above the waves.

It had been at least one day - perhaps two - since the young 9-year-old girl, Six, had woken up from the particularly bad nightmare that started her journey up from the bowels of the vessel she sat upon. She’d had the nightmares a lot, about that wretched, gigantic Lady, dressed in a thin red kimono, who had plagued both her waking and dream worlds for too long. But when she’d woken up this last time, Six had finally set into motion a plan she’d been working on for a good while. It’d been time to begin her little ‘adventure’ to escape the enormous, iceberg-like semi-submerged submarine that she was finally sitting up on top of, known as the Maw. It had been a long time since she’d had peace, since she’d seen the true light of day, and as she sat atop the unimaginably colossal ship, Six was just glad the sun was shining.

She wondered what would become of her now, after her ‘adventure’. She couldn’t hear the magical humming that had been nearly constant throughout the Maw anymore. It had been silenced, slain. Surely, the lumbering man-eating giants that inhabited her world were organized enough to put together an investigation as to why the Maw was suddenly out of service, why the humming that had kept the engine powered and running had stopped. Surely, they’d be able to piece together that the voice of the humming, the nearly invincible magic-wielding Lady, had been murdered. Well, she hadn’t been murdered, thought Six, as she rocked a little in time with the waves. She’d been eaten.

By Six.

What an awful way to go, thought Six. That Lady had been the worst thing Six had ever had in her mouth, and she had eaten some truly terrible things. In the end, the Lady had simply become another victim to Six’s overwhelming starvation-spurred hunger. Perhaps eating the Lady made her just like those horrible, gluttonous monsters, the giant Guests, who populated the upper portions of the Maw. She certainly felt their unending hunger sometimes, when her stomach began to eat itself and the pain she felt made her desperate for anything she could get her hands on. That hunger had driven her to put her teeth in the Lady’s neck in the first place when she was weakened by the sunlight that peaked through the residence’s ceiling skylight. In fact, her hunger may have even been one of the driving forces behind Six’s whole adventure. As Six looked up at the sun, she numbly noticed that she wasn’t so desperately hungry at that particular moment, and she managed to force onto her face a faint smile.

After a while, however, Six grew bored as she waited for something to happen on top of the Maw with nothing to do, and her mind started to wander to places she didn’t particularly wish it to go. Her thoughts strayed from the Guests and beings of the Maw, and turned again to what she’d eaten. She figured absentmindedly that she couldn’t have known a piece of bread tossed to her by a kind imprisoned child in the very depths of the Maw would lead to her eating something alive. Or, to be completely honest, three somethings. The more Six thought about her escape from the Maw, the more she felt bad. Begrudgingly, she began to take stock of what she’d eaten recently.

There was the bread, of course, that was the first thing she’d had since her journey had started. It’d been a tiny morsel, really, but it had helped her keep going with her journey to the surface. Six wondered who that boy was, who had so generously given her a scrap of his meagre meal, and if he had been taken to the Maw around the same time she had.

She wondered if that boy would have recognized her bright yellow rain jacket if she’d been in a better light when they’d met. It was her only other piece of clothing besides the rags that passed as a shirt and shorts that she wore underneath, and she never took it off. It was very recognisable as just another article of clothing, sure, but Six also knew it carried history with it. History, however, was easily forgotten if it wasn’t told, and Six wasn’t one to speak to others easily. Her silence didn’t mean she didn’t care, though, and she still wondered if  _ anybody _ would recognize her jacket anymore. If anyone else knew of the burdens it once held before it was hers. Some kids had known of it - once, a while back - but she couldn’t remember if they’d known it because of its history or Six herself. She thought to herself that those kids didn’t count, though the more she considered it the more she knew that she was a part of the jacket’s grim history now too.

The next thing she’d eaten, after the bread, was the meat. It’d been raw, and she was pretty sure it was meant to lure in one of the huge rats that had been scurrying around and infesting the prison area of the Maw, where the other captive kids were kept. But despite having  _ known _ that it was a trap, despite having seen the cage with its door hanging open around it, she hadn’t cared. All she’d cared about was how  _ hungry _ she’d been. She’d taken the bait, and she’d gotten trapped by the horrific creature with short stubby legs and long unnatural arms that she’d come to call the Janitor. She’d been lucky to escape from that cage when the Janitor had put her with the other children he’d caught. There’d been at least 6 or 7 other kids in cages where he had put her, and the amount of runaways that the Janitor had caught truly unnerved Six. But the Janitor hadn’t noticed when she’d broken out of her cage, and she’d been able to get around his section of the ship. She’d been lucky that, when he had come around to find her again, the Janitor’s fleshy Maw Staff mask had fallen over his eyes and left him blind, allowing her to avoid him easily.

Six had always thought of those masks, that the workers of the Maw wore, as the masks of malicious spirits. The staff who wore them only ever wished to catch her and eat her up, and she figured how much more malicious could a spirit get? Despite this, she’d oftentimes wondered about what those masks were. They looked like the wrinkly, layered faces of the Guests, thick and leathery like they were made with far too many folds, but they certainly weren’t properly attached to the staff’s faces like skin was supposed to be. For the Janitor, it had bunched up and rolled down his face, and apparently, he’d left it that way, blinding him to the world. Maybe he didn’t want to see what he was doing to the children as he packaged them up for the kitchens, or maybe he wished to stay ignorant when they quietly ran around him in a bid to escape.

The third thing she’d eaten was one of the rats themselves. That was the first live thing she’d eaten, but compared to the raw and probably decomposing meat she’d had just before, the rat hadn’t been too bad. It had squealed and screamed, struggling for dear life, but she’d needed its life more than it. It had gone down quickly, perhaps too quickly. She thought about how easy it had been to take its life, and how awful she’d felt afterwards, like she was going to be sick. Maybe she should have gotten sick, but she’d gotten too far by then, and travelled too high up through the Maw, to stop and think about what she’d done. She had to press on, and perhaps that was the turning point, when she truly became like those monsters she’d been running and hiding from all her life. She didn’t want to think about it for too long.

The fourth thing, Six almost regretted - the Nome*. Those creatures had been all over the place, small enough to be children like her, but without defining body features, without clothes, without faces. Their upwards pointed cone heads oftentimes disturbed Six, but they’d never made a move against her. In fact, they’d always been so very skittish. She knew why they were skittish, more so than the other actual children running around the place, but the circumstances of how they came to be there was something she kept her lips sealed about, especially to the other children trying to escape. She didn’t want to scare the others more than they already were, and really, if they were foolish enough, then she figured they deserved to find out on their own what the Nomes really were. Besides, Nomes could still be useful sometimes, Six knew, and at least before she’d eaten one of them she’d begun to befriend them and earn their trust, much to her delight.

And then, last but not least, Six had eaten the Lady. She wasn’t sure if eating the Lady could be defined as cannibalism - had the giants at one point been human? Or were they so far removed that, at that point, it wouldn’t have mattered anyways? Six knew that the giants feasted on children on a regular basis. If eating a giant counted as cannibalism then would all the giants that ate children also be participating in cannibalism as well? Honestly, Six wasn’t sure, and the mental gymnastics she was playing with herself made her head hurt a little.

As Six sat alone listening to the beat of the ocean and the squeals of frightened Nomes from within the doorway next to her, she felt the power that the Lady had unwillingly given her fading away, ebbing into the ether. That power had come to her when the Lady had been slain, as though it required a warm body to keep itself alive. It was a magic that sucked the souls out of others, and when she’d had it, Six had used it on the Guests. It was a fickle magic, however, and it cooperated only when the wielder commanded it in a truly infallible way. Six was not an infallible user, and while she’d wanted to take the Guests’ souls and crumple their lifeless bodies like loose leaf paper to be thrown into a waste basket, they’d simply fallen to the floor and died. She knew that what she’d wanted was rather cruel, her thoughts dragged to darker places by the evil of the magic, but ultimately she’d wanted revenge, and she figured that she’d gotten at least a little bit of that. Atop the Maw, the magic left her a little cold and thoroughly empty, and Six couldn’t think of any reason why anyone would want it back, knowing what corruption it caused in one’s soul.

The Maw seemed to become more still as the magic vanished from Six’s being, and Six looked down at its dark steel exterior. It was truly like a massive, nightmarish whale, its oversized blowhole only barely peeking up above the waves. Six had watched it rise out of the ocean before, so that it revealed it’s massive mouth-like entrance as well as its smokestack, but she knew that it only did that when it was taking on more Guests.

She wasn’t sure what happened to the Guests that were already in there, but she hadn’t ever seen them leave, nor felt the Maw heave itself out of the depths to accommodate a departure ship. All she’d ever seen was the Maw’s shipping captain, the Ferryman, bringing in more gluttonous monsters to snap the bones of children in their gobs. Six was pretty certain that the Ferryman wouldn’t be arriving anytime soon with a new shipment, however, because she’d just recently seen the latest delivery. She wondered how many were left, after she had massacred the upper deck Guests, and she wondered if they were worried about what was happening to the Maw.

Suddenly Six was jolted out of her seated position and thrown asunder as, to her astonishment, the Maw began to move again. The anchored cords made a terrible ruckus as they tore themselves from their attachments at the bottom of the ocean, which disrupted the ocean as large swaths of sea flooring came up with them. The smell of salt and iodine doubled as the Maw started to slowly rise a little bit out of the water, then it began to pick up the pace. As it settled into its final speed, Six placed a hand on the wall behind her to keep herself steady while she stood up. She felt the harsh breeze speed past her, and she was awed as she looked back behind the Maw and saw the massive white water wake it left behind.

Despite herself, Six began to laugh, though she felt bad for doing so. The Maw could travel! Six hadn’t thought it could do anything besides rise and lower itself. A number of times, as the Maw slammed its way through particularly large waves, ice cold ocean spray got to Six, and though her torso and head were protected by her jacket, her legs and face got soaked. The cold of the sea was biting, making her teeth chatter in her skull, and Six worried about how she would fare if she fell in. Without regard for Six’s concerns, however, the Maw tore through the ocean like a gargantuan speedboat, feeling for all the world like it had a mind of its own and a place to be.

𝆗⛭𝆘

Eventually, land appeared. When the horizon only barely gave way to subtle greens and browns, Six was nearly ecstatic, excited to get off of the nightmare that was the Maw and far, far away. But as they drew nearer, her excitement began to drain. She knew that coastline, that cliff rising over the brutal waves and jagged rocks below. She knew that dark forest behind it, she could almost taste the cotton, fluff, and doll-making materials in the horrible tower-like house at the very tip top of the cliff.

_ The Nest _ . The name of the place meant little to most, but to Six, it was almost as bad as the Maw. Before being captured and taken to the Maw, Six had spent a lot of time at the Nest, unable to escape. There, Six hadn’t been threatened with imminent consumption, but rather she’d had to contend with a smaller, girly giant who Six had nicknamed the Pretender. That giant had been obsessed with making everything look pretty and ‘perfect’, she’d hold tea parties every night with her ‘friends’, and spend every afternoon watching a movie with them or carting them around the Nest’s backyard. She had pretended that everything was fine and dandy, she’d pretended that she was the centre of the universe, but she’d had to have known her illusion would break eventually. One day, she had to fully realise she’d see that her ‘friends’ were just dolls, carved out of Six’s companions and stitched together just for that wretched girl to tear them apart when something broke through her vision of reality. She’d had to have known that someday, someone would fight back against being made into just another doll, and that one day, she would die.

Six remembered her time in the Nest, as the Maw plowed its way towards the coastline. She remembered how long Six had been forced to stay there waiting for something to change. She found she did that a lot: wait for something to change.

When the Maw finally drove itself into the shallows, tilting a little bit as it got itself stuck, its mouth rose up out of the ocean and a thick, long plank began to push out towards dry land like a long, stiff tongue. Even as the plank was still stretching itself to the shore, the Guests started to file out, lumbering along and stretching in the sunlight. They seemed somehow even more rotund than when Six saw them first enter the Maw, but she knew they towered over her tiny form. Many seemed to be blinking out of a trance, like they’d been spaced out the entire time they’d been in the ship. Most still had food in their hands or mouths, and as Six watched them reach the sandy shore, her stomach growled a little, though she tried to ignore the icy feeling of dread that sound gave her.

Six looked down from where she stood. Her place at the very top of the Maw had definitely given her a disadvantage. When she considered her options, it seemed that if she were to jump into the waters that were now an uncomfortable amount of feet below her, she figured she would probably be killed from the impact. Another thing, though she was loath to admit it, was that she didn’t know how to swim, and even if she survived the jump, she wasn’t confident that she could make it back to shore. On the other hand, however, she did not wish to re-enter the Maw, nor did she want to be right at the feet of the Guests as they left. Six was sure that at least one of them would notice her if she tried to run with them along the plank, and despite the spell of the Lady being gone, they would undoubtedly still want to eat her (giants loved to crunch the bones of children between their teeth whether they were under a hunger spell or not, Six knew). So she found herself stuck between a rock and a hard place, but she was running out of time to think about her options.

After considering for a couple seconds longer, she looked back down at the Guests, then made up her mind. She’d been in enough sticky situations near those monsters to know when she just had to take a leap of faith. Though most of the time those leaps had been purely metaphorical, this time, as she ran to the sloping side of the Maw, she found it was very literal. With one powerful boost of strength, she leapt off the top of the Maw, and plummeted towards the raging sea, attempting to keep herself upright and as quiet as possible as she fell.

It was a shockingly short fall, and almost instantly Six found herself deep below the ocean waves, wasting precious oxygen as her body froze up at the temperature of the water. The cold locked up her joints, and she choked on her own breath, horrible salty water rushing into her mouth and throat. For a second, Six couldn’t move her limbs, she was stuck and sinking further below the surface, barely able to tell which way was up. Horrified, she tried to kick and scream, glimmering bubbles floating up lazily before her as her breath got stolen away. After what felt like far too many moments, Six’s limbs suddenly broke free of their temporary freeze, and as her heart pounded harder and harder in her chest, she began to kick and push towards the air above. Her lungs burned as she began to take in water, her body screaming for oxygen as she paddled inefficiently upwards, her vision obscured and quickly fading.

By a miracle of luck, Six broke through the surface before she blacked out, and gasped as she tried to keep her head above water while the ocean attempted to drag her back down. At first she couldn’t breathe in spite of her head being above the waves, then she tried to cough up the ocean water in her lungs. Before she could, a wave crashed over her head and she sucked in more water. As she breached the surface once more, Six flailed for a second, unable to catch her breath. Her lungs felt like they were burning up from the inside out and her mouth became coated in a thick layer of salt. She squeezed her eyes closed against the ocean water in her face as hot tears pealed out of her eyes, then she quickly gasped in some air, her throat burning all the more, as she felt like she was going to hurl. The freezing water toppled on top of her again, and she sunk farther than she had the first time before she got her legs under herself and pushed herself upwards. She surfaced, and while she was momentarily above the water and barely able to breathe again, she snapped her eyes open and desperately tried to make out the direction towards land.

She caught a glimpse of the cliff, and the Nest on top of it, before going under again, and in a split-second decision she decided that any land, even if it led to a nightmare of a house, was better than nothing. She began to frantically paddle, making slow, uneven progress towards where she figured a pathway up to the Nest would be. Her body began to burn just as hot as her lungs were, and she felt like every time she was dragged below the surface would be her last. However, just before her thin little body gave out on her, she reached the shore.

Six collapsed on the salty, seaweed-covered rocks that were at the edge of the ocean, shivering from how extremely cold the ocean water was. She heaved and gasped for even a molecule of oxygen while she tried to push herself into a partially seated position to regurgitate the water she’d inhaled. Despite how much water had entered her body in such a short time, Six found she was overwhelmingly thirsty, but she couldn’t do anything about that right then. She could feel slick, disgusting seaweed strands that had wrapped around her legs, though she hadn’t noticed when they’d gotten there, and as she choked out saltwater, she shakily peeled off the ocean plants and threw them onto the rocks with the rest of their dead brethren. Then she noticed that her hood had been knocked off her head, and while she braced herself against the ground with one arm and continued to heave, she brought the other hand to her head and lifted the hood up again. Never in her life had Six been so glad to be on land, out of the ocean and able to just stop for a second. As she gagged up more ocean water, she made a mental note to herself that if she could help it, she would never again touch another body of water so long as she lived.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of coughing up disgusting sea water, Six’s body told her it was at least slightly recovered from her first and last swim, and she shakily got to her feet, in order to begin walking. Her soaked raincoat and rags weighed her down more than she would have liked, and chilled her to her very bones, but she pushed herself to get moving. She couldn’t stay there, at the ocean’s edge waiting for some monster to find her. She had to keep moving to survive.

She found a path that appeared to have been redone recently. There was fresh, relatively tidy gravel that lined it and crunched beneath her feet, keeping it flattened and clean-looking. The trees along the path loomed threateningly over Six’s head, reminding her of her place in the world, of just how many impossibly enormous things lived and existed in the same places she did. As she began to reach the top with her burning legs and pounding heart, Six saw handrails start to appear along the sides of the path as well, neat and white just like what guarded the marble stairs within the Nest’s walls. The cleanliness of it all truly baffled Six.

She eventually reached the end of the path, then came to a halt. Despite the path having been redone, it seemed that nothing else about the Nest had, and staring at the open space before her made her realise just how long she’d been stranded in the Maw. The yard was a mess, and just from looking at it, Six could visualise just what had happened there to make it like that. She could picture just how long the mess had stayed like that, and she was stunned than none of the disaster that littered the yard had been cleaned up in the years she’d spent away from it. She could see in her mind’s eye the flower pots, both empty and full, smashing far too close to her as she ran past the greenhouse area from the Nest’s entrance, leaving ceramic bits everywhere, though they had since been grown over with moss and grass. The fence, which had once been electrified to guard the midway point of the yard, stood busted, open and falling apart, its gate leaning much too far off its newly rusted hinges to ever be functional again. Even the strange massive stone hand statues that had been pushed over when Six had made her escape last time were still laying on the ground, allowing a place for ivy and brave little grasses to flourish. She couldn’t forget why she’d even been able to escape, however - she’d had a companion, a  _ friend _ , and as she looked out over the yard area, Six could picture her friend running behind her through the obstacles the yard had presented. Six was just glad she knew her friend had gotten out from under those huge stone hands before they’d crushed her and broken up their little duo before the end.

That friend… the thought of the girl who had escaped with Six made her a little sad, but still Six turned away from the Nest as she continued into the unfenced portion of the yard. The grass was tall and soft between her toes as she stepped carefully and quietly across the property. She followed the path she and the girl had taken to try and escape, for she knew that there was a way away from the Nest if she did so. At the time, that girl was as quick as a lightning bolt, and though Six had been relatively quick on her feet as well, wearing nothing but her old raggedy grey shirt and shorts, in the end the girl had somehow been just a little faster. Six made her way to the front entrance of a squat white shed, and eyeballed the shut door. She then tried to jiggle the door open, but all she got in return was the panicked chattering of Nomes as they scattered through their secret pathways and hidey-holes away from the door.

The girl, during their escape, had run up the garden walkway Six had just followed from the Nest’s front entrance, and while dodging attacks from one of the Pretender’s servants, the Butler, she’d managed to slip into the shed Six was standing before. Six herself had fallen down just before the shed, but right as she’d gotten up, the girl had closed the door, and blocked it somehow. Six had tried to get in after her, but the girl must have thought Six’s banging had been the Butler’s attempts to get in, and had left Six stranded outside. From that moment until Six and the girl met up again, Six wasn’t sure where the girl had gone, or what she’d done. She could try to theorize what she might have done with those spare minutes before Six saw her again. Six didn’t actually know, however, all she’d known was that she’d needed to find her own way down the cliff somehow, before the Butler got to her.

So Six had gone around. With a quick glance, Six saw the hole in the bushes that she’d snuck through that day, and followed the path she’d made. The bushes, of course, had grown since the day of the escape (though she herself had not), and Six found that, though she still fit through the hole, it was a little tight. She paid the tight fit little mind, though, and crawled her way through the undergrowth behind the shed. Eventually, she came to the spot where the greenery turned into the cliff face.

Six remembered that cliff clearly. As she carefully walked and shuffled along the cliff, going back down towards the ocean on a path she knew would lead her far, far inland, she saw where she figured the girl had to have gotten out of the shed. In her mind’s eye, Six could imagine the girl emerging from a cave-like entrance a couple metres away from where Six skirted death, then ran along a much more safe section of the cliff than Six’s path. Before she could get very far, however, Six remembered that the girl had quickly been stopped on her way, as she’d come across the Pretender crying over something that Six herself hadn’t been able to see from her vantage point. From there, things had gone quickly downhill as the Pretender noticed the girl, and as the memories played themselves in front of Six’s eyes while she continued on her path, she kept track of where the girl had gone to get away.

The girl had begun to climb down the cliff face when she’d been backed into a corner by the Pretender. Six had tried to keep up with her, she’d even stopped and watched as the girl scrambled down the cliff face before the cliff broke a little and Six was sent tumbling down to the next platform. In the end, however, they’d both ended on two long, thin ledges that protruded out from the cliff face like a pair of cold, hard thorns. Six’s ledge had been above the girl’s, which gave her a slight advantage to try and help her out of her predicament, but Six could imagine the girl’s terror when she realised she couldn’t climb down any further without risking falling into the raging waves far below. Six walked slowly along her ledge as she relived her memories, then when she reached the end she looked down to the ledge below. At the end of Six’s outcropping, there’d once sat a massive, teetering boulder, which threatened to fall down to the girl’s ledge below, and Six had figured that if she could drop in onto the Pretender right before she got the girl, then maybe they could have both made it off of the ledges together. She’d put her plan into motion when the girl reached the end of her ledge, which ended a little farther than Six’s did, and Six managed to nail the Pretender right in the head, knocking her down and out. It’d seemed like that would’ve been the end, Six and the girl had looked at each other with such relief as they reveled in their victory.

Then the Pretender had leapt back up, and thrown herself at the girl, launching them both over the edge of the outcropping and into the great blue sea below. As the memory of the girl’s form vanishing into the waves came to her mind, Six winced, then made her way off of her jagged rock landing. She didn’t want to stick around and remember for too long, it made her feel like she hadn’t done enough, like there had been something more she could have done to save that girl.

Six reached the shore again, this time on the opposite side of the cliff from where she’d just dragged herself to land. There was a path around and away from the cliff and the Nest, from what Six remembered, and as she looked at the ocean once more, she could almost see it. She could picture in her mind’s eye the yellow raincoat drifting towards her in those horrible ocean tides, the girl having slipped out of it as the Pretender dragged her down. Six had waded into the water and picked up the raincoat, and she’d known it was somehow cursed. She’d known it would only bring sorrow and fear to her life, but she felt like she’d had an obligation to the girl, to her friend, so she’d fished it out of the ocean, and hadn’t taken it off since.

Six turned away from the sea, and began to make her way around the cliff. She’d seen a lot of things, lived through a lot of dangerous situations, but she knew that seeing the girl sink like a stone under the ocean would stay with her forever. She sometimes wondered how her friend had gotten the yellow raincoat, and if, perhaps, that girl had been the same one she’d seen in pictures and paintings on the Maw, sitting in suspicious places and making Six’s curiosity spike about the meaning of it all. But she knew that the Nest, just like the Maw, was a cursed place, filled with nothing but misery and horror. As Six finally took her leave of both of them, she hoped that she would never have to see them, or their mystery and anguish, ever again.

𝆗⚜𝆘

The walk around the Nest was longer than Six remembered, and as she finally began to enter the woods that backed the towering cliffside estate, the sun had already begun to go down. The forest was eerie and full of strange sounds that made Six pick up her pace as the evening got comfortable with itself, but all in all, she found she felt a strange sort of peace.

She didn’t know where the Guests of the Maw had gone, but she knew that they weren’t near her. They weren’t quiet; she knew that if she got anywhere near them, she’d hear them. The odd silence that permeated the air discomfited her, however, and despite the filtered fading light of the sun through the trees, she felt as though she was being watched. Occasionally, a bird would sing too close to her, or a small mammal would scurry out from under her footfalls, and she’d jump, ready to run away. But the longer she walked through the woods, the more uncomfortably relaxed she became.

A thick, heavy fog started to roll in as the last of the dying light from the sun faded away, and through it, Six could taste clean water. No salt, no ocean, just fresh, inland water. Her parched, dry mouth began to salivate, and Six opened her mouth to try and glean as much moisture from the air as she could. The fog began to permeate Six’s mind, her thoughts dulling and the tension in her body all but leaving her as a hint of water washed out a little of the salt that coated her mouth and her clammy skin got coated in a refreshing layer of evening mist. She could just barely sense the hunger she’d felt earlier as it built up inside her, but it felt far away and disconnected from her, like somehow it was someone else’s hunger. She felt as though she was walking through a dream, her body almost completely numb.

Then suddenly, Six kicked something hard and loud, and the clattering ruckus it made snapped her out of her lull as her bare toes burned with pain. Instantly, she was aware of the oppressive nature of the fog and the dark evening, aware of the creatures watching her walk, watching her and waiting for her to be their next meal. Aware of the incredibly familiar ache in her stomach that threatened to take over her senses.

Six spat out the little bit of moisture that remained in her mouth, which washed away some more of the salty taste that had been left behind from the ocean, but she partially regretted doing so as she felt how dry her mouth and throat felt. She tried to push all of this out of her mind, though, as she looked down at what she’d kicked. It had been a bear trap, massive and gleaming maliciously with the moisture from the air. Trapped within it’s huge, piercing jaws was a fairly large rabbit, which seemed to have been dead for a while. Six figured the rabbit was the only reason she hadn’t been snared in the trap herself.

Even though Six was hungry, as she stared at the rabbit she found it was… manageable. Much more so than it had been on the Maw. She wondered if the Lady and her magical, hypnotic humming had anything to do with how hungry she’d been, but she pushed the thought aside, not wanting to think about it or the Maw for very long. All she knew was that if she were in the Maw she might have been tempted to consume the rabbit raw, but right then, though she was rather hungry, she by no means wished to eat uncooked meat. Besides, Six thought, if there were bear traps around, then perhaps there’d be someone nearby, and where there’s people, monstrous or not, there’s food.

Six glanced around. Through the darkness of the evening and the heavy, dense fog, she could vaguely make out the shapes of other bear traps far away in the grass, almost all of which had not been sprung. With careful and quiet steps, Six maneuvered her way through the traps with light steps, then followed them to their origin. While she worked her way to the source, she wondered what kind of giant (if it was a giant in the woods) that would go to all the hassle of putting up so many traps. Certainly not one like the Guests, Six thought to herself. They were much too lazy, much too focused on their own little bubble to ever notice if a trap went off. Besides, she considered, if she was as big as they were, with an appetite as huge and horrific as theirs was, she wouldn’t be drawn to living in the woods like this. Why would one, when all the food likes to scurry around one’s very feet scrambling to find something to get them through the week in the hearts of cities and towns?

Evening quickly turned to night as everything around Six seemed to somehow get even darker, but soon the traps started to thin out and disperse, and Six found a huge old cabin, with light pouring out from its windows. Even from outside, Six could hear it creaking with old age, whistling as wind blew through the cracks in its walls and the holes in its roofing. It practically threatened to fall apart where it stood, thought it held itself strong for the moment. Despite its age, however, Six could tell that the cabin had to be the place where the thing that’d set out all the bear traps lived. There were large wooden boxes and crates that sat against the side that Six approached from, some shut but others open and revealing new-looking trash and animal remains. As Six moved past the side of the cabin and around the boxes and junk to get towards where she figured a front entrance would be, she saw a broken toilet nestled within the boxes, dry and crusty, leaned next to a couple of wooden pallets. Six crept over to where the porch steps started, and looked out over at what the cabin faced to see more garbage, scattered like they’d been thrown out hastily by whatever lived there. The trees had been cleared out of the front area to make room for all the junk. If she squinted, Six could make out the form of a destroyed television.

Six looked back up at the porch, where a tall, plain door stood closed with a bright open window next to it, then put one foot on the first stair. The aged wood creaked and groaned beneath her light weight, which made Six a little discouraged from continuing, but a rumble from her stomach had her moving up the small flight carefully and slowly. The landing brought no end to the creaking and groaning of the old, weather-damaged wood, but Six tried to be as quiet as possible so as not to disturb whatever lay inside the cabin.

She came to the door first, but she didn’t dare use it, as she eyeballed its rusty hinges and the damage it had worn into the porch wood before it. Instead, she moved towards the other end of the porch where the window lit up the small area around it. As she came nearer, Six noticed the fog begin to lift, and saw that below the window, there sat a wooden crate short enough that she could climb up it but tall enough that it would allow her to reach the windowsill. Quickly, she clambered up the box, then pulled herself through the window. Past the open fluttering curtains inside, Six saw a counter below the windowsill, past which was a small, dingy and dim kitchen. The sight of the kitchen made her heart leap with something akin to hope, and she softly crouched onto the counter, then judged the distance to the floor before she moved to get down.

Once again, her stomach grumbled and growled at her as she hopped off the counter and landed properly inside the cabin, and she doubled over for a couple seconds as the pain became momentarily unbearable. She’d need to find something to eat soon, she knew, but she was finally in a place that she was almost certain would have something for her to eat. As her hunger pains subsided for the moment, she straightened up, then looked around the kitchen as she tried to gauge where the food might be hidden.

The size of everything within it seemed to confirm for Six that whatever lived in the cabin certainly wasn’t of her kind, but rather something like the giants from the Maw (she wondered if, since that cabin was so close to the Nest, whatever lived there knew about the Nest and the Maw, and knew about what happened in those places). There were vials on the long counter Six had just jumped from that were the size of her entire body, and the stove which sat between the counter and a large sink was large enough to cook Six and two other kids within, though Six tried not to think about that too hard. There was an enormous kettle on top of the stove, though the cooktop wasn’t on, and next to that, the dishes piled high enough on top of each other to be a falling hazard, though not nearly as high as they did in the kitchens of the Maw. Above the counter, a number of cabinets sat just out of the glow of the singular kitchen light, shut and gloomily watching over the rest of the room. In the centre of the room sat a squat wood table, attop which was a large, overfilled pot, which seemed to be filled with some form of sludge-looking stew. Around the pot were a couple more dishes, along with what appeared to be two skinned and prepared mammals, both of which looked to be about the size of Six herself.

Just as she was about to climb up onto the table to take what she could get, Six caught sight of the fridge. It was tucked away in the far left corner of the room beside the sink, away from the window and the kitchen light, and just like the cabinets, it sat shut, glowering at Six as she approached it. It’s white exterior seemed to have been relatively recently cleaned, and though its handle was obviously well used, it was far from falling off.

Six placed her hands on the side of the fridge door, then pulled with all her might. It took a couple seconds, but the magnet seal began to give way, and the door flew open. Six stumbled back a little as the rush of cold air from inside hit her, then she looked up at what was inside. She saw rows upon rows of raw meat, in various different forms and at various stages of freshness, and she sighed in disappointment until multiple relatively small loaves of cold, unpackaged bread caught her eye at the bottom of the fridge. She smiled at the grim irony as she thought of that kid back on the Maw who had tossed her bread, then grabbed the first loaf that she could. Without thinking too hard, she scarfed it down as fast as possible, almost immediately feeling much better.

As she finished her small meal, Six looked back at the other cold loaves. She figured that if whatever lived in the cabin didn’t notice her taking one loaf of bread, it probably wouldn’t notice if she took a couple more. She grabbed two more loaves, then stuck them into her jacket, thankful that she’d started to dry off enough that, hopefully, the loaves wouldn’t get too wet in her pockets.

Just then, she heard something from outside the cabin, heavy footfalls and the ruckus of chains and metal against itself, and just as quickly as it had risen, Six’s heart dropped in fear. She spun around from the fridge as the footfalls came closer to the front of the cabin, then she snapped into action. Once again grabbing the fridge door, she pulled on it with both hands, and before it could close on her, she sidestepped out of its path. The fridge door snapped shut just as those heavy footfalls found the porch steps outside, and Six ran to where the kitchen met the rest of the cabin.

The door to the other rooms in the cabin was most of the way closed, but it was cracked just enough for Six to push on it and slip through it just before the outside door slammed open. Without looking back, Six ran blindly into a much darker hallway, before slamming into a wall opposite the kitchen door and being knocked off her feet. She landed right on her butt as whatever it was that had just entered the cabin went completely silent as though listening for her.

Six, for her part, froze, waiting to see if whatever it was would come to investigate as pain flared up in her nose and forehead. She could almost guarantee that ‘it’ was a child-eating giant, just from the sound of its incredibly heavy feet and the way it nearly flung the outside door off of its ancient rusty hinges as it’d come in, and she most certainly didn’t want it coming for her through its own house. Before long, however, whatever it was that now occupied the kitchen seemed to dismiss Six’s foolish blunder, and continued to do whatever it had begun to do in there.

With a silent sigh of relief, Six quickly and quietly got up off the ground as she rubbed her sore nose and forehead where they’d hit the wall. She looked to her right first as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the hallway and tried to shake off the adrenaline running through her body. There seemed to be another hallway towards where Six was looking, and she decided that any way would be better than back into the kitchen.

With as much speed as she dared while trying to stay quiet, Six tip-tapped her way over to the second hallway. She grabbed a hold of the corner of the wall she was nearest, then peaked around it to make sure there weren’t any immediate threats. Whatever was making those thunderous footfalls began to make its way towards the door Six had just slipped through, however, and not particularly wishing to get caught, Six dashed from around her corner and up the hallway she’d just checked. She heard the door open behind her, and the heavy steps headed in her direction as she saw another cracked door in front of her. Once again, she pushed the door in front of her open just enough for her to slip through, then blindly ran in, this time keeping an arm extended before her as she did.

Unfortunately, before she got very far in the new room, she froze once more. She’d entered some form of dining room, which was just as musty as the rest of the cabin. It had a large, tall table in the centre, directly below the singular room light. Across from the door that Six had just entered, a large, relatively cluttered dresser with shelves and drawers sat, above which a vent-like hole went through the thin wooden wall.

Of course, it wasn’t the furniture that had Six frozen, but rather the three gigantic figures that sat at the table. Six gasped as her heart jumped straight into her throat, and she watched the figures, terrified that at any moment, one of them would turn to her and, in a fit of violent gluttonous rage, reach for her to use her as an appetizer. After a second, though, when nothing happened, Six relaxed somewhat and frowned. The figures did nothing, not even breathe, and just as quickly as her fear had come, it vanished in favour of curiosity. Unfortunately, Six didn’t get to explore her curiosity, for at that moment, as Six’s eyes landed on the missing limbs, fluff, and loose string that stuck out of the massive figure’s flesh and skin, the creature that had been making those heavy footfalls finally came into the dining room.

The giant, a man with a sack over his head that had one hole for an eye, a rifle slung around his back, a handful of hanging rabbits, and an old-fashioned hunter’s style get-up on, saw Six instantly, and cried out something before he ran to grab her. Six spun on her heels and made for the dresser shelves as the giant - the  _ Hunter _ , she decided to call him - gave chase to her. She jumped onto them and began climbing up to get to the vent-like hole in the wall, but the Hunter was faster, and before she could reach the top of the dresser, the Hunter had swiped her off of the shelves. He held her like a doll, staring at her through the hole in his fabric mask, and Six squirmed, refusing to scream, desperately trying to get free. Her heart hammered hard in her chest as she thought of all the horrible ways a creature that dealt with live animals in traps all the time would torture her.

Finally, it seemed that the Hunter had had enough with simply staring at her, and he began to walk back out of the dining room with her in hand. It had been a long journey, Six thought as the Hunter took her down the same two hallways she’d just been in, if that was the end at least she’d made it far. Besides, it wasn’t like she hadn’t tried, and perhaps someone, like one of the other kids she’d met along her way, knew that she’d successfully escaped both the Nest and the Maw in her short lifetime. That had to count for something, right?

The Hunter reached the end of the first hallway, and Six would have smacked her forehead had she been able to move her arms when she saw the hallway’s open window. She’d completely ignored it, and for that, she was now about to pay very dearly. Instead of hucking her out the window and aiming at her with his rifle like some form of hunting game, the Hunter then turned away from the window, and towards a secondary door in the opposite wall from the kitchen. He grabbed one of three cages that sat just beside it, then opened the door and went down the stairs behind it.

Each step down made Six more and more sick. She couldn’t help but wonder what kind of horrific things a hunter kept in his basement. When they arrived, however, Six looked around to find nothing but a workbench with a sewing machine on top, surrounded by massive bags of pillow fluff and a couple large spools of thread. There were two doors opposite each other in the basement, though the one on the left of the stairs looked much more stable and functional than the one on the right, which seemed to be about ready to fall off its hinges as it sat open by an inch. The Hunter turned his back to the sewing station and the broken door, and walked into the functional one. The far side of the dark room opposite the door was filled with two tables and a large number of fabric rolls on top of them, but he gave them no mind as he placed the cage down on top of the tall pile of wooden crates just inside the door.

Six squirmed some more in his grasp, and the Hunter growled something, then flicked her hood off of her head, much to Six’s surprise and fear. She struggled harder as she tried to get her arms free and pull her hood back on, but the Hunter seemed to take interest in this as he watched her more closely. Then, he seemed to laugh a little, the twisted sound grating on Six’s ears. He proceeded to grip her with both of his enormous hands and remove her raincoat, much to Six’s horror. She tried to stop him as he undid the first of three buttons that kept the yellow slicker closed tightly around her form, but the best she could do was wiggle, which only seemed to mildly inconvenience and amuse him.

He undid the final button on her jacket, then stuck one hand inside of it to keep her in his grasp as he removed the raincoat as carefully as though he was removing the fur of some animal. Six wanted to scream, to cry and beg the Hunter not to take her jacket, but she found her voice was missing, and her tears dried out from her dive in the ocean. When her hands were ripped out of the sleeves, Six gasped out and attempted to say something, anything, but the Hunter didn’t seem to notice as he held her slack jacket in one hand and her, with her tiny fists and feet slamming into his massive forearm, in the other. He opened the cage he’d brought down with the hand that held the raincoat, placed her inside, then slammed it shut before she had a chance to escape. Six immediately threw herself at the door of the cage, but the Hunter was faster than she was, and clicked the lock into place before she could force her way out of her cell. Then he left the basement with her precious yellow jacket, and only then did she find enough of her voice to wail out something not quite human at the great loss.

For a moment, everything felt like it was falling apart, and her whole world seemed to be tearing apart at the seams in that dark fabric room. Not only had she lost the jacket, and the unspoken vow she’d made with it over her unfortunate friend at the Nest, but she’d lost her bread, which she’d figured might’ve been able to hold her over for a while. Now, she had nothing but the thin, ratty grey clothes she’d had for years, which was barely enough to keep the chills of the house at bay. Six backed away from the cage door, then collapsed in a heap at the back of it. She just wanted to curl up and never wake up, she felt as though she was at a precipice at the end of the world, waiting for a subtle breeze to blow her off.

Then she heard something strange. It sounded nice, soft and sweet, and Six connected in her unhappy mind that it was  _ music _ . What would music be doing in a place like this, thought Six as she sat up in her cage, what could possibly be making it?

The sound faded in and out, like it was only partially there, but Six could tell that it was coming from somewhere nearby, and despite her broken heart and shattered soul, curiosity rose its ugly head and she suddenly wanted to find out where the music was coming from. She listened for another minute, trying to gauge how far away it was, then looked down at the lock on her cage and scoffed. Did the Hunter really think that a flimsy sliding latch would hold her, or any child, for that matter? Something in the back of her mind told her that it must have held someone before, for him to trust it with her, but she pushed the thought aside with all of her building anger and sorrow. For now, she just had to find that music.

Six slid the sliding latch open with ease, then pushed the cage door open. She glanced down at how far the floor was, then turned around to start climbing down the crates, thankful that the Hunter had left the fabric room’s door open to let in at least a little bit of light. When she made it to the floor, she scampered to the door, and entered the sewing area again. She noticed a relatively large wooden box with a cleaver jammed into one side just below the stairs as she hurried by them, and shivered as she thought about what it may have been aimed at when it got lodged at such a violent angle.

The music grew louder as Six approached the other door in the basement, and she almost felt bad for the pathetic door that stood in her way. It had large, vertical holes in it from where bugs had chewed it, and the hinges were almost black with how much rust covered them. Six grabbed the door on its open side and pulled it gently until she knew she could get through, wincing as the hinges screamed at her from lack of use. Then she skirted through and, though she knew it wouldn’t do anything if the Hunter came back and decided to knock the door down, closed it. It stayed closed, and Six felt satisfied that it would at the very least keep the rats out.

Six turned around to look at the room she had ended up in, where the music seemed to be the most loud. It was incredibly dark, just like the room she’d just escaped from, but she was still just able to see enough of the room, thanks to the large window very high up on the wall that rattled in time with the wind. Above her, hanging from certain points in the rafters, a number of hooks attached to ropes hung, limp and useless, which gave Six a couple shivers. Before her, shoved up next to the far wall, was a table a bit shorter than the one she had seen in the kitchen. A number of cages and boxes were stacked on the one side of it, and on top of it there was a pile of what must have been pelts. The walls were littered with child-like drawings, like a stick figure man, as well as a number of tally marks, but the drawing that caught Six’s eye the most was the one just above the table and its contents, which was of a thin, tall tower which seemed to be sending out some form of wave or signal. On the ground, there were more pelts under the table, and an old, worn rug in the centre of the room.

However, none of these drew Six’s attention for long, for her eyes were drawn to the object in the middle of the room. As the soft, cold light of the bright pale moon filtered through the window for the first time that night, Six found the source of the music - a cylindrical metal wind-up music box, which was about the size of her entire head.

Slowly, the music box began to wind down, but Six found she wanted to listen to its melody for longer. She approached the music box with the same distracted walk she’d had when the fog had set in within the forest, then stopped just before it and watched its crank turn for a couple seconds. She was a little confused as to how the music box had started to play in the first place, if no one else was there to wind it up for her to hear, but the thought was dashed from her mind as it finally stopped. She gasped a little, then picked it up and sat down where it had been. She started to turn the crank, and the music box began to play again, much to Six’s delight.

The tune it played… Six could have sworn she’d heard it somewhere before, it sounded so very familiar. As it began to loop while she continued to crank, Six hummed along with it, her voice scratchy and sore. She kept in perfect time with it, until her voice broke and she had to cough, pausing in her turning of the crank to do so. Afterwards, she avoided humming, and continued to turn the crank. She couldn’t think of where she knew that song, but the longer she listened to it, the more entranced she became by it, and bit by bit, she began to forget about her worries, her needs, and the real world all together.

𝆗🝤𝆘

It had been a long time, just Six sitting alone and cranking the music box. Probably too long, if Six was being honest with herself.

The sun had already risen and set again. Actually, it may have done that a couple of times, but Six found she couldn’t care, for she wasn’t hungry, or thirsty, or in fact in want of anything. The music box eased away everything that distracted or upset her, so she continued cranking and playing that strange, familiar tune. But she’d heard something outside of the room, which was why she was suddenly back to herself, actively turning the crank rather than simply doing it on autopilot.

Someone had walked down the stairs and wandered around the sewing room just outside of Six’s music room, but it wasn’t the Hunter. No, this person’s footsteps were light and quiet, like hers, but they had a definitive stomp to them that conveyed the idea of someone who had run around a strange place like the cabin before. She’d heard whoever it was come tip-tip-tapping up to the planks that jammed the hole in her door, then she’d heard them wander away, breaking something as they went.

Six waited. For some reason, she wanted that someone to come back, but she wasn’t entirely sure why. She’d forgotten something that she was almost positive this stranger could help her remember, but what was it that she’d forgotten? The more she racked her brains, the more the music box’s soft melody began to grate at her nerves, annoying her more than it was calming her.

Suddenly, something from the far room loudly clattered to the ground, and though she continued turning the crank like her life depended on it, Six tensed up. She was already facing towards the door, but she looked up at it as she cranked. Whatever had been dropped began to get dragged, sounding like metal against wood as it moved slowly towards Six’s door. As the dragged object approached, Six could hear the slow, deliberate steps of the stranger, and Six smiled a little bit. Maybe she’d remember what it was that she’d forgotten when the stranger came through the door.

The dragging stopped just outside her door, and Six was almost prepared to let the stranger simply listen to the music box with her. There was a moment of peace, and a couple lovely notes drifted gently from the box as Six heard the sound of the stranger shifting outside the door. Then instantly Six’s serenity was broken as the stranger smashed the object he’d dragged over through the planks in the hole.

Six dropped the music box like it was on fire and scrambled under the table, her heart pounding as the object - a sharp, gleaming axe - tore into the planks two more times before whoever it was that was cutting them down seemed to figure that they’d done enough damage and stopped. A boy maybe a centimetre or two taller than Six emerged from the hole he’d created, and as he looked around the music room, Six quickly looked him over in return.

He wore exclusively shades of brown. He had on a long coat with long sleeves that reached the middle of his calves and was buttoned with only the very top button under his neck. Under that, he wore a relatively formal but scuffed looking button-down shirt, which he had tucked into his full-length pants. He must have had issues with tripping over the bottom of his pants, however, for he had them rolled up to just above his ankles. Just like Six, he wore no shoes or socks, but even still, Six was almost jealous of how much more clothing he wore than she did. But his most defining feature was what he wore on his head. While Six simply had her short black hair and long bangs to cover her face, this kid had a whole paper bag covering his head, with two eye holes cut out in the front so that he could see. Six couldn’t make out his eyes through the holes, but she knew when he was looking around at the room and when he had finally settled on her.

Six didn’t let her fear show as she scooted forward a little from under the desk and caught his full attention. Maybe it was the fact that he’d quite literally taken an axe to the blocked door that led to her, or maybe it was the fact that he was a total stranger, but Six found she had a deep mistrust in him already. He slowly knelt down until he was down on one knee, then extended a hand towards Six. She watched it for a second, then realised he was offering his hand in peace. He wanted to befriend her.

Within the flash of a second, Six considered her options as if doing so was second nature to her. (Something about that shook loose a thought in her mind, and the memory of something  _ missing _ came to her mind again. Subtly she remembered a jacket she needed to get back -  _ her _ jacket, that’s what it was.) There were the two obvious options, which were to take his hand and allow him into her personal bubble, or attack him for scaring her. Then there were the more subtle options. She could pretend to agree to his friendship and, if they stuck together, betray him later to survive when the Hunter came to kill and eat them both. She could also fake an attack, then flee when he was caught off guard. Or of course, she could simply run out of the room, doing none of the other options and hope that he didn’t follow.

She didn’t like the sound of just running away, but she also didn’t want to be friendly with him after he displayed such brutish violence with the axe, so she made herself a compromise. The boy called to her in a low, harsh whisper which Six assumed was meant to be soft and calming, and Six partially crawled out from under the table towards him, towards his outstretched hand. He seemed to become happier with her reaction, and held his arm out straighter, so that she could take a hold of it easier. The boy did his best to make no sudden movements, and it almost seemed to Six that he was holding his breath. She wondered why he wanted to be friends with her so badly, why he’d come to her basement in the first place. Then, just as they were about to lock hands, Six leapt up and shoved the boy out of her way, then dashed for the door. He gasped and tumbled to the floor as she went, but Six refused to look back before she was out of the room, for she didn’t want to see if he was following yet or not.

She ran up the stairs, then paused at the top when she didn’t hear the boy’s patter of feet right behind her. Confused, Six looked back over the weak wooden hand railing to the basement below, and watched as the boy shakily but quickly made his way out of the music room. He seemed to pause, then he noticed Six waiting for him, and without hesitating he began to make his way quickly to the stairs. Once again, Six wondered why he would want to follow her, but she decided that perhaps it was a good thing as she turned tail and ran. In any case, if the Hunter came, he would most likely catch the boy first, since the boy was lagging so far behind her anyways.

Maybe he’d become a friend to her like the girl from the Nest had been, Six thought to herself as she made her way down the hallway again (ignoring the window again because it had been shut tight). If they both escaped the Hunter’s cabin, maybe they’d be able to survive together, at least for a little while. Six figured that things in the outside world hadn’t changed much since before she’d gotten stuck in the Nest, and remembered how hard it was to survive all on her lonesome back then. But that was planning too far in the future, Six told herself, for right then she needed to focus on getting her jacket back, no matter the cost, and it seemed like the kid would be willing to help her do just that. Since he was willing to chase her through the cabin hallways and past the dining room full of fake giants without even knowing who she was yet, perhaps he was willing to get far away from all the monsters with her. Maybe, she’d even get to learn his name some day.

**Author's Note:**

> *To specify, they weren’t called ‘Gnomes’, they were definitely known as ‘Nomes’, without a ‘G’ in the spelling. Most of the unfortunate children in the Maw never learned how to spell past sounding out their words, if they were ever taught to hold a pencil in the first place, and though Six had been tempted to correct their grammar before, she’d never wanted to stand out as the nerdy kid who knew how to spell. So the Nomes continued to be named with a misspelling.
> 
> Thank you for reading all the way to the end! If you liked this story I would love it if you gave me a comment, and criticism is always, always welcome! This is of course being published before the second game comes out, which means that any inaccuracies in plot are purely from ignorance, so please, when the new game comes out and proves all of this story wrong, be gentle and don't come back here to tell me how wrong I was. Thank you again, and see you all in the next fic!


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